Vanaf begin jaren zestig van de vorige eeuw werd de Nederlandse massawoningbouw gedomineerd door het modernisme, waarbinnen de wijkgedachte leidend was. Het Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan van Amsterdam uit 1935 diende in veel Nederlandse steden als inspiratiebron. Stadsuitbreidingen werden uitgevoerd binnen een hiërarchische opzet, waarbij elke wijk was gedacht als een opzichzelfstaand geheel met eigen voorzieningen en een strikte scheiding van functies. Rechtlijnige infrastructuur en brede groene gordels scheidden de woonwijken van hun omgeving. Tabula rasa was het uitgangspunt.

From the early 1960s Dutch mass housing was dominated by a modernism in which the neighbourhood concept held sway. Amsterdam’s 1935 General Extension Plan served as a source of inspiration in many cities. Urban extensions were carried out within a hierarchical set-up whereby each neighbourhood was conceived as a self-contained entity with its own amenities and a strict separation of functions. Rectilinear infrastructure and wide green belts separated housing estates from their surroundings. Tabula rasa was the basic principle.@en

Vanaf begin jaren zestig van de vorige eeuw werd de Nederlandse massawoningbouw gedomineerd door het modernisme, waarbinnen de wijkgedachte leidend was. Het Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan van Amsterdam uit 1935 diende in veel Nederlandse steden als inspiratiebron. Stadsuitbreidingen werden uitgevoerd binnen een hiërarchische opzet, waarbij elke wijk was gedacht als een opzichzelfstaand geheel met eigen voorzieningen en een strikte scheiding van functies. Rechtlijnige infrastructuur en brede groene gordels scheidden de woonwijken van hun omgeving. Tabula rasa was het uitgangspunt.

From the early 1960s Dutch mass housing was dominated by a modernism in which the neighbourhood concept held sway. Amsterdam’s 1935 General Extension Plan served as a source of inspiration in many cities. Urban extensions were carried out within a hierarchical set-up whereby each neighbourhood was conceived as a self-contained entity with its own amenities and a strict separation of functions. Rectilinear infrastructure and wide green belts separated housing estates from their surroundings. Tabula rasa was the basic principle.@en

From the 1960s, Dutch mass housing construction was for a while dominated by modernism. Housing developments shot up in double quick time – after the existing cultural landscape had first been totally erased. In both typology and architecture, planners and architects strove to avoid any sense of continuity between these new estates and their predecessors: architecture was no more than the expression of function by means of material and technology. The following period saw the construction of housing estates that didn’t really want to be housing estates, aspiring instead to be a Zuiderzee town (Almere Haven), a collage of contrived themes (Kattenbroek in Amersfoort), or a Dutch canal city (Brandevoort in Helmond). Clearly, there can be no question of authenticity when such identities are arbitrarily pasted on.Perhaps we should conclude that only those housing developments that do not aspire to be anything other than what they are – housing developments – are authentic: which is to say, the hardcore modernist housing estates of the 1960s. So one may well ask whether, in this context, the term authenticity has any meaning at all after the modernist period. But that need not be a problem because on another point the modernists have been proved right: a new-build dwelling is an interchangeable mass product, even in postmodern times.

This chapter deals with the interacting aspects of urban development and building regulations in the Netherlands. Two towns are placed in context and compared, both of them known for their systematic lay-out: the small town of Elburg, which was founded as a new town in the fourteenth century, and Amsterdam, which became one of the largest European towns during the Dutch Golden Age. Over the long term, the development of urban practice and building codes shows more continuity than is generally assumed. Perhaps the main difference between medieval and early modern urbanism in the Netherlands lies in the amount of archival material on which we base our ideas on planning, not on the motives and methods of planners.@en